From Alfred Babs, Ilorin

The Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), loyal to the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has expressed fear that the ruling party may be heading towards electoral defeat ahead 2023 general elections.

Members of the party, who spoke to newsmen in Ilorin yesterday, called for intervention of the national secretariat of the party to address future fortune of the party in the state.

The factional state APC deputy chairman, Chief Sunday Oyebiyi, who led the group, said that, “Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq is a political liability and that he is dangerously navigating the party back to Egypt instead of the Promised Land that the ‘O To Ge’ revolution had in stock for Kwarans”.

The group, who commended people in the state for their understanding and perseverance over alleged poor performance of the ruling government, assured the people that, “there will definitely be light after this unexpected darkness that we find ourselves”.

The party chieftain, who criticised the administration of Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq for appointing people without experience as commissioners, said that the governor contradicted himself in a recent interview he granted on the question of merit in recruiting a few teachers by not applying same standard in appointing his commissioners.

The people also said that the governor was not always available to run affairs of the state, accusing him of “globetrotting on taxpayers’ money”.

Chief Oyebiyi, who called on the state governor to always be grateful to members of the party who worked for success of the party in 2019 rather than castigating them, said that the governor’s electoral victory was not by individual efforts.

“Alhaji Lai Mohammed, as a party leader, did all that was expected and required for a party to win elections. Ironically, the then gubernatorial candidate, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq who was being assisted contributed nothing to the campaign funds which himself had earlier acknowledged.

“It is also important to mention that the party received no ‘kobo’ as campaign fund from anybody other than Alhaji Lai Mohammed, contrary to the Governor’s blackmail. All other stakeholders assisted all the candidates in the elections in their own way and not through the party.

“Therefore, why the Governor has continued grunting and groaning over the dead issue left much to be desired since he was yet to account for N1bn campaign grants he collected from the APC National headquarters. The question is: who should now be robed with the garment of dishonesty?

“We, by any stress of imagination, are not surprised by the Governor’s confessional statement on his abandonment of APC party manifesto. This was the same manner he left the party in the lurch in 2019 shortly after becoming the candidate.

“Nothing can be truer than the notion that in every class of society, gratitude is the rarest of all human virtues. However, it is least expected that a man supposedly brought up in Islamic philosophy could be so unmindful of the Islamic ethical values of gratitude and moral rectitude in human relationship,” he said.